Karie Willyerd has had an interesting career path: in the past, she was a chief learning officer, a chief talent officer, and a start-up entrepreneur who started the predecessor of which is now known as SAP Jam. As a ‘Workplace Futurist’ at SAP, Karie is engaged in thought leadership, looking at the trends that are going to affect the future of work.
“… we all go through a long (learning) journey to get to the jobs we are in now.”, says Karie, pointing out the importance of learning – especially for leaders this consists of a mix of education, experience and more.
Questions covered during the interview include the following:
What are the implications of Digital Transformation on the workforce and the work place?
What are the hallmarks of digital era companies, and what are communalities of digital leaders – according to findings from a brand new Oxford Economics Survey?
How about the importance of learning in this context?
Karie Willyerd – Workplace Futurist at SAP Education and Knowledge Services – in an interview with Dr. Bernd Welz, EVP and Head of Scale, Enablement & Transformation
at SAPPHIRE NOW & ASUG ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2016.
Why is Learning so important?
One of Willyerd’s latest projects is a research study about Digital Transformation with Oxford Economics. In this study 2,000 executives and 2,000 employees were surveyed. The key attributes or communalities of digital leaders - digital era companies quite advanced in Digital Transformation - are impressive:
The highlights found in the survey are that digital leaders grow faster with revenue and their profits are better. They invest in education, spend twice as much on creating a digital environment to support their people: You don’t want education and technology to get too far apart from each other. Moreover, digital leaders are more diverse and more ready for change. This survey proves once more that learning is important!
More details about the survey findings were also outlined by Dr. Sabine Remdisch, Visiting Researcher at Stanford University and Project Head at the Leadership Garage. Her team does innovative research on Leadership in the digital world. Take a look at the short interview here.
